But more often they are simply excuses for doing the real work and experiencing the emotional discomfort inherent in making meaningful changes in our work and lives.

FORBES: Why You Procrastinate, and How to Stop It. Now.

What we can be sure is that the growth of sophisticated financial systems will continue to play an important role in fashioning the changes in all of our lives, including funding (often speculatively) the technologies that have transformed our world already from an agricultural to an industrial economy, and are now perhaps shaping the first post-industrial information economy.

BBC: Of bulbs and bubbles

There are small, incremental lifestyle changes that we can incorporate in our daily lives to make those changes such that we will be there for those generations who will come behind us.

NPR: Roundtable: Black Women and Body Image

The question is whether together, we can muster the will -- in our own lives, in our common institutions, in our politics -- to bring about the changes we need.

WHITEHOUSE: President Obama Speaks at Barnard College Commencement Ceremony | The White House

Now, in some ways, these changes have made our lives a lot easier.

WHITEHOUSE: The Critical Role of Manufacturing

Especially since to the recipients, they are not signals but wrenching changes in what is the most important element of our lives: our place.

CNN: What Mayer misses on work-life balance

In the following pages FORBES examines how the war changes the way we lead our lives and the way we do business.

FORBES: Life During Wartime